"Martians always come"

Fragment of the biography of Philip Dick - about why he decided to talk about philosophy with the help of science fiction

The publishing house Eksmo published a biography of the famous science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. Life and Almighty invasions ” - from the author of Lawrence Sutin, written in 1989 (translator Efim Berenstein). The general public knows Philip Dick, first of all, as an author, according to the books of which super popular science fiction films were shot - “Running Blade”, “Remember All”, “Special Opinion” and others. Sutin talks not only about the life of a science fiction writer (in particular, he first worked with the personal diary of Dick “Exegisa”), but also why, in reality, his texts answer outstanding philosophical questions - and why the genre of science fiction has suitable for this better than others. With the permission of the Medusa publishing house, he publishes a fragment from the first chapter of the book.

Philip K. Dick (1928–1982) remains the hidden treasure of American literature, because most of his works are written in the genre of science fiction, which almost never attracts serious attention.

Can you write about spaceships and be serious? A huge white whale is a literary symbol, but this cannot be said about the mushroom-slide with Ganyved, who also has telepathic abilities.

Phil Dick uses the entire trash of the scientific and fantastic genre-aliens with tentacles, alternative worlds and some amazing high-tech devices-to brightly demonstrate the unrealistic fiction that this American author of the twentieth century wrote. In Europe and Japan, Phil is widely recognized as one of our most original novelists, and the labels of the science writer were removed from it.

But somehow, in his native country, Phil’s books are still standing on the shelves in a brothel.

The problem is that the best works of Phil: “Man in the High Castle” (1962), “Stigmates of Palmer Eldrich” (1964), “Movige of the Time in Marcian” (1969), “Clouding” (1977) and the aforementioned “Valis” (1981)-went out under the rubric “Science fiction”, if they can be attributed to any kind to be attributed to any one at all. heading. And science fiction forces seriously thinking Americans to smirk: guys in torn shirts and radial guns, buzzing monsters undress the girls in brass busties - all this is a set of "Wonderful Tomorrow of the New World", which more reminds you of boring films of categories B with flying saucers hanging over toy cities, or vigorous Superheroes from the comics that you read in childhood. And speaking of children, obvious, although unproven is the fact that most readers of science fiction, like writers (including Phil Dick), first became fans of this genre long before they graduated from school. What can be done with a genre that rarely attracts new readers from among people self -sufficient?

Some science fiction readers, tired of ridicule, indicate that some official classics of the highest level, like Sir Thomas Mor with his “utopia” (1516), are associated with this genre, because the alternative world is logically extrapolated from hypothetical social innovations. They proclaim Edgar Alan through the founding father of modern science fiction-forty years earlier than the Frenchman Jules Verne-on the basis of such stories as “Truth about what happened to Mr. Waldemar” and “Mystification”. They refer to the proud British tradition of science fiction, which includes works created by writers, undoubtedly, the highest level, such as Herbert Wells, Oldos Haxly, K. S. Lewis, George Orwell, Kingsley Emis, Antoni Bergeses, Colin Wilson and Doris Lessing.

But most American fans of science fiction are mocking this tortured scientific apologetics. They know very well what the genre is and where it comes from, and here is the story that they will tell you.

First of all, science fiction was not born in the mind of Mora, because he wrote in Latin, damn it, just as in the minds of software, or Wells, or Verne, or even, for that, under the binding of a particular thick book. Fiction grew like an ardent silver orchid of richly diluted soil consisting of numerous cheap magazines that were abounded in American newspaper kiosks from the end of the First World War until the early fifties (just when the writer's career of Dick began - only in June 1953 his stories were placed in seven different cheap magazines). When these magazines began to give up their positions, the heyday of publications in soft covers revived this genre. Fiction has been sold and continues to be sold to this day, because the best writers in this genre, like those who wrote in the genres of the detective, western and love stories, knew that the imagination can be an incredibly simple opening lock if you know how to use the tested rules.

As for the genre, the main rule here is and has always been the following: start with a stunning idea, and let it be freely and surprisingly realized in the world of the future. Cheap magazines paid a little, but quite enough ... If you consistently gave out stunning ideas and could shake your scribble at a puzzling speed.

Phil was quite suitable for this. No one in the history of the fantastic genre - with such surprise, someone buys new boots for the children of the writer - no one could raise the question: “What if?” - So wide, unbridled and convincingly, like Philip K. Dick.

He loved to tell the story of how he discovered science fiction: “I was twelve years [in 1940], when I read my first science fiction magazine ... it was called Stiring Science Stories, and I think he had four issues. The editor was Don Wallheim, who later, in 1954, bought my first novel ... And then many more. I stumbled upon this magazine by accident; In fact, I was looking for Popular Science. I was extremely surprised. Stories about science? I immediately felt the magic that I discovered in the early years in books about the country of Oz, and now, in addition to magic wands, science added to this magic ... In any case, in my views, magic began to equate to science, and science (future) - with magic. ”

When he was a little over twenty, Phil re -read James Joyce's “Finnegan Wake” several times. Throughout his life, the circle of his reading was truly unlimited-from physics publications to the analysis of Dasein Binswanger, Jung, Kant, William Burrose, Bible, Dead Sea sweatshirts, Bhagavat-gita. Did this affect his labors? Phil often quoted - until the authors of science fiction - Stendhal, Flauber, and especially Maupassant, whose stories, along with the stories of James T. Farrell, taught him how to build their own stories to sell their lives in the early fifties: he wrote more than seventy in three years before he began to compose novels.

I want to say that Phil was smart as a devil and was able to appreciate the best literary works. So what did he need from the literature of the lower level?

It was science fiction with its outright attitude, first of all, surprisingly, Fila made a free writer.

Free - from what? The art of writing a biography consists in resolving impossible questions regarding your subject, the answers to which you cannot find for yourself, but I will do everything I can by the end of this book. But now imagine that you are a young writer who can print one hundred and twenty amazing words per minute on a typewriter, and it is difficult for you to restrain yourself when all this is rushing of you. Now imagine the capabilities of the genre in which any psychological, political, sexual or evolutionary premise is acceptable, while readers are ready to offer real money for the attractive power of unknown worlds.

Phil terribly wanted to get to the "mainstream". He went on years, he perfectly understood that he was writing brilliant books and no one else thinks on the questions that he was obsessed with: "What is reality?" - And the frightening consequence of this issue: "What is a person?" But he also knew that the rules of the "mainstream" were not given the opportunity to work with ideas, that from time to time they come to his head.

Knowing this, he could feel at the same time rejected, angry and blessed: “I want to write about the people that I love and put them in a fictional world that arises from my mind is not the world in which we really live, since this real world does not correspond to my standards. Well, I could reconsider my measurements, but I fail to succeed. I would have to obey reality. I have never obeyed reality. That's what I need science fiction. If you want to obey reality, engage in reading Philip Rot, read the decent New York popular authors of bestseller. [...] That is why I love science fiction. I love to read it; I love to write it. Fantasy writers do not see any possibilities except the wildest. This is not only: “What if?” - This is: “My God, what if?” - The question that is asked in a state of obsession and hysteria. Martians always come. ”